Solution To Land Bots I think....

I was sitting back doing some coding tonight in VB and some other web work and was thinking of some of the issues that are in SL right now and one big one is these land bots that go around buying up land thats priced right as soon as it hits before anyone can get to it. This has become a major issue and turns off alot of new people to SL I think not to mention I am sure it hurts SL in the long run as well. I mean who is going to pay the $10.00 a month to be a premium member when you can't even get land to play around with.

Anyway... It hit me! The answer was so simple and I don't think it would be that hard for SL to implement into their system either. Just guessing on that of course. Why not use a alpha and numeric verification system like alot of the forums and such use these days to prevent spam bots. This would stop bots in SL dead in their tracks. And even today there are some bots that are able to read these however there is a solution for that too....

Humans can read a animated object, bots can not. Animate these letters numbers into a gif of some sort. It could even be a slight bounce that is random.

Maybe I am wrong but I am about 99.9% sure if SL did something this simple it would 100% kill the bot use.

I have created a quick example of what it might look like in a land buy form on SL. Of course it would be smaller and these would come at random.

http://voodoobamboosl.tripod.com/index.htm


Correct me if I am wrong.... It was just an idea.

I don't think there's a problem with bots buying first land since there is no first land program.

There is, however, a forum for feature suggestions.

There is still firstland? I thought that program was over. O.O

I was sitting back doing some coding tonight in VB and some other web work and was thinking of some of the issues that are in SL right now and one big one is these land bots that go around buying up land thats priced really good as soon as it hits. This has become a major issue and turns off alot of new people to SL I think not to mention I am sure it hurts SL in the long run as well. I mean who is going to pay the $10.00 a month to be a premium member when you can't even land to play around with.

Anyway... It hit me! The answer was so simple and I don't think it would be that hard for SL to implement into their system either. Just guessing on that of course. Why not use a alpha and numeric verification system like alot of the forums and such use these days to prevent spam bots. This would stop bots in SL dead in their tracks. And even today there are some bots that are able to read these however there is a solution for that too....

Humans can read a animated object, bots can not. Animate these letters numbers into a gif of some sort. It could even be a slight bounce that is random.

Maybe I am wrong but I am about 99.9% sure if SL did something this simple it would 100% kill the bot use.

I have created a quick example of what it might look like in a land buy form on SL. Of course it would be smaller and these would come at random.

http://voodoobamboosl.tripod.com/index.htm


Correct me if I am wrong.... It was just an idea.

Sorry your right. I moved it there. Well any good priced land for that matter. You know what I mean. These landbots that are driving everyone nuts. Just was kicking out the idea.

I could be wrong..............voodoo correct me if I am But I think that was just an example of how easy would be to fix the landbot problem. We all know first land is dead and gone...........but if someone wants to buy a reasonably priced plot and doesnn't have a chance because of some 100 gig processor grabbing it first...............

And before someone points out that there ain't no such animal as a 100 gig processor, I already know that LOL

lol true. It was just an idea I was kicking around. Your right first come first serve and I have no problem with that. Its too bad though because I think the first land idea was a good one when they had it for new people coming into SL it was just never really perfected in a way that could be fair and yet not have to be monitored for poeple attempting to cheat the system by the Lidens. Who knows, maybe its a start into some of the other bot solutions that are running around.

The only way to send an animated image is either as an animated gif file, or a series of non-animated images in some kind of stream. Either way, it would only be a matter of time before a bot comes along that can merge them into a machine-readable format.

Plus, the noise-enhanced text and numbers are as often as not hard for HUMANS to read too.

Edit: I just had a look at that animated image on your website, and i say with all sincerity, I have ZERO idea what the actual alphanumeric sequence I would have to type is supposed to be.

Yeah I was thinking GIF myself. The bot could always freeze a frame I guess and then look at it but either way its still an extra step that it would need to take to break it. This system has worked great for alot of forums out there for the past few years. The one advantage to SL is that their scripting is limited in alot of ways so I don't think this would be real easy to break if it was in use. Could be wrong though.

Actually, it isn't even an extra step. Any program which can read gif files but not animated gifs (such as some of MS's earlier image viewers) will default to reading the first frame. That in itself could be enough to make a useful analysis. I guess you could make that first frame invisible though, to prevent this. It's still not that much more work to analyse each frame electronically though, once you have the basic tools to analyse a still image.

Good point. Don't you think it would be a harder system to break in SL though since your limited to using SL scripting? I have not done alot in the way of SL scripting yet so I am not sure.

If you are using a landbot client, you are NOT limited to lsl scripting.

Correct, thats just like I am sitting here now working in VB. You could code a small application to work with the SL client rather easy and I am not saying that this is unbreakable... Hell what is these days on the net. But would it really be worth the time and effort it would take to break it is the question. This is the same stand that alot of software makers have taken these days. They know their security is not full proof but if you can at least make someones life a living hell attempting to break it the thought is... Is it worth the time and effort?

They are called CAPTCHAs and do - at worst - slow down bots a little. They are pretty popular on blogs and other places where random, anonymous comments can be posted.

I was hoping the simple solution would involve nailing someone to a cross.

disclaimer: that is a semi-obscure pop-culture allusion and does not actually advocate nailing anyone to anything

lol yeah thats the name, could not think of it off the top of my head, thanks! Nailing to a cross would be good too!

Considering how much the land market is worth, I'd say it probably is worth teh time and effort, from a purely monetary point of view.

Plus, there's the hacker challenge. We already know it is technically possibel to break this one, just that the relevant programs haven't been hooked together. A lot of black hat types would want to assemble the necessary bit of code just to see if they can, never mind the money.

is it worth the extra bit of programming for something which we can reasonably expect to be defeated within a week or two or someone deciding to take up the gauntlet, and knowing that it is a big inconvenience on legitimate buyers?

I guess your right. Of course the best way of stopping this would be through better tracking on SL's part of IP's, hash and so forth of course we all know thats not going to happen.

I got it! Maybe the Lindens should start making people pay taxes! lol Then they could fund a staff to track this stuff and go after people. LMAO J/K!!! DONT HANG ME!

1- Require all bots to register as bots

2- change TOS to allow combat vs bots with no penalties.

3 - offer a 100L bounty on verified bot orbits

hehe =)

If you are going to use a CAPTCHA type thing, why not just borrow a bit more from the way some forums work? Simply set it so that if the thing gets it wrong the first time, it's a five minute way before that bot's 'key' can search again. If the bot keeps hammering within that five minute wait time or gets it wrong three times, it's a 24 hour time-out from the game. Since there is a limit to what a bot runner is probably willing to pay in premium accounts, theoretically, this would slow them down immensely. I mean, it's one thing to have maybe 10 premium accounts for the tier, but to have every single one of them go "Cannot connect at this time, please wait 24 hours before connecting again?" Might make some of them think again... or make them pay even MORE to LL before they can get back in. Also, it will make the numbers on the front page increase too

HELL NO!!!

A well-written captcha reader script is vastly more reliable at reading those thngs than the hman Eyeball Mk I. You are going to piss off an awful lot of humans if you ban them for misreading a captcha.

Hmm.. true. Very true.